Building a scientific model for East Asian pastoral origins: A reply to Honeychurch et al.

Taylor, William

doi:10.1016/j.ara.2021.100286

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Despite these tantalizing links between climate changes and pastoral dynamics, the paleoclimatic and -environmental records for Mongolia suffer from poor temporal resolution, age uncertainties, and/or ambiguous proxy interpretation. Oftentimes, chronological frameworks designed for geological research questions (with wide error ranges) are applied to archaeological timescales, meaning that the same dataset can be used to draw widely differing conclusions 37 . Anthropogenic impacts related to herding have also drastically impacted Mongolia’s landscape — meaning that pollen and any other biological data, for example, might be affected by human land-use since 1200 or even 3000 BCE 8 , 31 , which could hamper a direct paleohydrological reconstruction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Central Mongolian lake sediments reveal new insights on climate change and equestrian empires in the Eastern Steppes

Struck

Bliedtner

Strobel

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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The repeated expansion of East Asian steppe cultures was a key driver of Eurasian history, forging new social, economic, and biological links across the continent. Climate has been suggested as important driver of these poorly understood cultural expansions, but paleoclimate records from the Mongolian Plateau often suffer from poor age control or ambiguous proxy interpretation. Here, we use a combination of geochemical analyses and comprehensive radiocarbon dating to establish the first robust and detailed record of paleohydrological conditions for Lake Telmen, Mongolia, covering the past ~ 4000 years. Our record shows that humid conditions coincided with solar minima, and hydrological modeling confirms the high sensitivity of the lake to paleoclimate changes. Careful comparisons with archaeological and historical records suggest that in the vast semi-arid grasslands of eastern Eurasia, solar minima led to reduced temperatures, less evaporation, and high biomass production, expanding the power base for pastoral economies and horse cavalry. Our findings suggest a crucial link between temperature dynamics in the Eastern Steppe and key social developments, such as the emergence of pastoral empires, and fuel concerns that global warming enhances water scarcity in the semi-arid regions of interior Eurasia.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Central Mongolian lake sediments reveal new insights on climate change and equestrian empires in the Eastern Steppes

Struck

Bliedtner

Strobel

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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show abstract

“…1900 BC (Jeong et al, 2020: 893-894;Shaughnessy, 1988). This later date, spreading from Sintashta and into Central and East Asia with Andronovo has recently been substantiated with genetic evidence (Librado et al, 2021), which also helps explain why horse terminology was not adopted into the eastern steppe zone, and linguistically into Uralic or Turkic, with the Afanasievo spread (Taylor, 2021;Honeychurch et al, 2021). The spread of Sintashta-derived domesticated horses perhaps supplanted earlier and less sophisticated horse usage, since also earlier branches of Indo-European attest to a common word and must all have been well acquainted with the horse continually since they broke away from Proto-Indo-European.…”

Section: Horse (And Chariot)mentioning

confidence: 97%

Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia

Bjørn

2022

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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Loanword analysis is a unique contribution of historical linguistics to our understanding of prehistoric cultural interfaces. As language reflects the lives of its speakers, the substantiation of loanwords draws on the composite evidence from linguistic as well as auxiliary data from archaeology and genetics through triangulation. The Bronze Age of Central Asia is in principle linguistically mute, but a host of recent independent observations that tie languages, cultures, and genetics together in various ways invites a comprehensive reassessment of six highly diagnostic loanwords (‘seven’, ‘name/fame’, ‘sister-in-law’, ‘honey’, ‘metal’, and ‘horse’), that are associated with the Bronze Age. Moreover, they are shared between Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, and sometimes Old Chinese. The successful identification of the interfaces for these loanwords can help settle longstanding debates on languages, migrations, and the items themselves. Each item is analyzed using the comparative method with reference to the archaeological record to assess the plausibility of a transfer. I argue that the six items can be dated to have entered Central and East Asian languages from immigrant Indo-European languages spoken in the Afanasievo and Andronovo cultures, including a novel source for the ‘horse’ in Old Chinese.

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“…in the Altai-Sayan Mountain region and Minusinsk Basin; they are deemed the earliest herders and copper-working people in the region, which leads to their attribution to the Eneolithic or Early Bronze Age period. Their diet, however, seems to have been more aligned with Neolithic food patterns than with later Bronze Age diets that are characterized by elevated dairy and meat consumption (Honeychurch et al 2021; reply by Taylor 2021). Graves marked by stone constructions above the surface represented the norm in premodern Mongolia ever since, which makes them easily detectable during pedestrian surveys (Eregzen 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Unique Burial of the Fourth Millennium b.c.e. and the Earliest Burial Traditions in Mongolia

Reichert¹,

Erdene-Ochir²,

Bemmann³

2022

Asian Perspectives

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Not even a dozen burials are known from Neolithic times in the area of modern-day Mongolia. This period is of utmost interest as it constitutes the transitional phase from hunter-gatherer-fisher communities during the Palaeolithic to the introduction of mobile pastoralism around 3000 B.C.E. with the Afanas'evo culture. This article presents new excavation results from a Neolithic burial at "Ölziı ˘t Denzh" (internal site code KGS-11), near the center of Erdenemandal in Arkhangaı ˘Aı ˘mag, Central Mongolia, and places this burial in the context of the earliest graves in Mongolia. The site consists of nearly 180 indistinct earth mound features, one of which was excavated to verify anthropogenic origin of the identified mounds. All mounds were strongly affected by burrowing animals. The excavation yielded the body of a female in an extremely crouched position. The find inventory contains two unique stone artifacts. Two radiocarbon dates put the burial at the first half of the fourth millennium B.C.E. The other 10 earliest burials from Mongolia fall into two regional groups, one in the Egiı ˘n Gol valley of northern Mongolia and one in eastern Mongolia; each group displays different burial customs and grave structures. Although it remains to be corroborated by further excavations, the pure earth mounds and their association within a large burial ground at Ölziı ˘t Denzh seem to be unique aspects of a burial style otherwise unknown for this time and region, as the comparison with the other largely contemporary remains from Mongolia shows. This article therefore aims to draw attention to a potentially new form of burial that has not previously been recognized in the field.

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Building a scientific model for East Asian pastoral origins: A reply to Honeychurch et al.

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

Central Mongolian lake sediments reveal new insights on climate change and equestrian empires in the Eastern Steppes

Central Mongolian lake sediments reveal new insights on climate change and equestrian empires in the Eastern Steppes

Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia

A Unique Burial of the Fourth Millennium b.c.e. and the Earliest Burial Traditions in Mongolia

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